MY TRADITION
I grew up in the Assemblies of God. I attended an AG church, went to an AG Bible college, and originally planted New Day as an AG church. So naturally, much of what I believed about church and ministry came from the Assemblies of God.
And in the Assemblies of God, the title Pastor is used very broadly. It applies to both men and women, and to those serving in all kinds of ministry roles. Do you work at a church? You’re a pastor! Do you perform weddings or funerals? You’re a pastor! Do you counsel people or visit them in the hospital? You’re a pastor! Do you help make disciples? You’re a pastor!
So when we planted New Day, I brought that same understanding with me. We gave the title Pastor to people serving in all kinds of ministry roles because that’s what I had always known. And I never really questioned it. I mean, do you really need to check up on a denomination’s doctrinal positions? If anyone has it right, wouldn’t it be them?
But here’s what I want you to understand. I never actually studied the Bible for myself to find out what a pastor was. I simply accepted what I had been taught, assumed it was biblical, and brought that understanding with me into New Day.
MY BIBLE
But over the years, as I studied Scripture, I started coming across passages that didn’t seem to line up with what I’d always been taught about the pastoral office. And the more I came across these passages, the more I began to wonder whether the understanding I’d inherited from my tradition was actually what Scripture taught.
MY STUDY
And that led me into what became a five-year, on-again, off-again study of the pastoral office. And today, I want to begin sharing with you what I discovered.
But before we dive in, I want to make something clear. Right now, I’m not trying to convince you that I’m right or persuade you to change your mind if you see things differently. I’m simply telling you my story—what I studied and what I found.
As I studied I saw that God defines the pastoral office in three important ways—by its scope, function, and eligibility.
Next week we’ll look at function, and the week after that at eligibility. But today we’ll look at…
SCOPE
Scope answers this question: What are pastors entrusted with? And the answer is: Oversight of the church as a whole, rather than merely a department within it.
Ok, let’s unpack that. First…
1. Pastors give oversight to the whole church.
We see this first in Jesus’ words to Peter. In John 21:15–17, Jesus tells him to “tend my sheep.” Think about what it means for a shepherd to be entrusted with a flock. The natural understanding is that he is responsible for caring for the entire flock, not just a few sheep within it. And Jesus uses that picture to describe the responsibility He’s entrusting to Peter: which is care and oversight of His sheep, the church as a whole.
Peter later describes that same responsibility when he addresses the elders in 1 Peter 5:1–3. Here, Peter calls himself a “fellow elder” and tells the elders to “shepherd the flock of God” by “exercising oversight.” Again, notice the scope: the entire flock. Peter does not describe elders as overseeing one portion of the church. He charges them with oversight of the church itself.
Paul is even more explicit. In Acts 20:28, he tells the Ephesian elders to pay careful attention to “all the flock” over which the Holy Spirit has made them overseers. And in 1 Timothy 3:4–5, Paul says that an overseer must be able to care for “God’s church.” That is, care for the church as a whole.
So as I studied, the first thing I saw was that from Jesus to Peter to Paul—pastors give oversight to the church as a whole.
Ok, here’s the second thing I saw…
2. There is a difference between overseeing the whole church and leading a specific ministry within it.
Both are vitally important—but they’re different.
And we see this distinction in Acts 6. In Acts 6 a problem arises with the daily distribution of food to widows, so the apostles, who were serving as the church’s pastors (1 Peter 5:1), direct the church to select seven men to take responsibility for that need.
And notice the different scope of their responsibilities. The pastors were responsible for the church as a whole. The seven were entrusted with a particular ministry within the church. The seven were given responsibility for the daily distribution, not oversight of the entire congregation.
So you see? Leading a ministry within the church is not the same as overseeing the church as a whole. In the Bible those are two different things.
All this to say: In Scripture, the scope of the pastoral office is oversight of the entire flock.
APPLICATION
And now let me bring this back to our leadership pipeline and title changes. When it came time to choose titles for each level of the pipeline, this understanding helped determine who would—and who wouldn’t—retain the title Pastor.
And I want to point this out because it represents a change from how we’ve operated for the last 18 years. Historically, when we gave someone the title Pastor, we didn’t consider the scope of their leadership. Whether someone was overseeing the church as a whole or leading a particular ministry within it, we used the title broadly.
But having now studied what Scripture teaches about the pastoral office, we believe God defines that office more narrowly. Specifically, we believe that one of the defining characteristics of a pastor is the scope of their responsibility: oversight of the church as a whole.
So do you see what’s happening? For 18 years, we’ve used the title Pastor very broadly. But now that we understand Scripture to define the office more narrowly, we’re making changes to bring our practice into alignment with what we believe God’s Word teaches.
QUESTIONS
Ok, at this time I’ll open it up for questions.
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